For Honor Notebook and Desktop Benchmarks

Trinity. After Rainbow Six Siege and The Division, Ubisoft releases their next Triple-A title, which focuses primarily on riveting multiplayer battlers. Knights, Samurai and Vikings - For Honor actually pits three different factions against each other. Our review focuses primarily on how different GPUs handle the various swinging swords, katanas and axes.

Florian Glaser, Klaus Hinum, ✓ Stefanie Voigt (translated by Bernie Pechlaner), Published 02/23/2017 🇩🇪

For the original German article, see here.

Graphics

Not surprisingly, Ubisoft once again relies on their own AnvilNext Engine, which the company uses for various other titles its lineup in either a beefed-up or pared-down version (Assassin‘s Creed-series, Rainbow Six Siege, Steep, Ghost Recon Wildlands, ...). From a technical standpoint, For Honor leaves us with a good to very good impression. The textures are largely sharp and the intricate details as well as the good-looking effects are other positive attributes. The gaming universe, which is based on medieval times, contains plenty of atmosphere.

One of the game's most differentiating attributes is the combat system, which seems to follow the principle "easy to learn, but difficult to master". Thanks to the multitude of maneuvers and varied as well as nicely choreographed animations and finishing moves, For Honor doesn't feel stale and routine nearly as quickly as the hack-and-slash competitor Ryse from Crytek (which features quite similar gameplay). The standard opponents in single player mode, however, do get boring after a while and might invite the user to just keep on clicking. Speaking of single player mode: For Honor requires a constant online connection, even though this shouldn't be necessary unless the game is running in multi player or in co-op mode.

The developers did a good job with the options menu. In order to avoid crowding, the options are separated into two separate menus. The Display tab allows for monitor adjustments like mode, resolution, frequency, vertical synchronization, field of view, and contrast.

The Graphics tab allows the user to change ten options - texture filter, anti-aliasing (FXAA, SMAA, TAA), ambient occlusion and motion blur, among others - which are explained at length in some cases. We recommend to leave "render scaling" at 100 % if at all possible, since the picture tends to be fuzzy otherwise.

Users who don't want to spend a lot of time fine-tuning the game can just simply use one of the four quality presets. We used the highest preset called "Extreme" for our screenshots as well as the benchmark video. Except for the extremely demanding SSAA, all other settings are set to their respective maximum here, which results in an outstanding visual experience. The comparison photos below show that shadows don't quite look as clean on "High".

The preset "Medium" is almost indistinguishable from "High", which translate into a marginal gain in performance. The "Low" setting - and hence minimum details - results in a significant loss in texture quality and also in atmosphere, since both ambient occlusion and anti-aliasing are turned off and the shadows are weak to boot. We'd never call For Honor ugly, though - particularly in light of the frame rates, which increase significantly at the lowest settings.

An indicator within the options menu shows how much VRAM is going to be needed. Compared to other games released in 2016 and 2017 (examples: Resident Evil 7, Call of Duty Infinite Warfare, Deus Ex Mankind Divided, ...), For Honor doesn't require too much video RAM. With the preset "Extreme" active, the game uses 2 GB for Full-HD and 4 GB for 4K resolution.

Most of the settings can be adjusted while a game is running, but some require switching back to the main menu. A restart of the game is seemingly never necessary - a good thing, considering the long initial load time and the fact that the intro videos can't be skipped. Within the game, the load times are acceptable (we tested with both HDDs and SSDs).

We didn't run into any technical issues during benchmarking and when playing, although For Honor didn't run properly in fullscreen mode when using Nvidia's Optimus technology and refused to run with the integrated GPU altogether. This is particularly surprising because the title is part of Nvidia's gaming program "The way it‘s meant to be played" and we had the newest driver (ForceWare 378.66) installed as well.

Otherwise, we didn't encounter any anomalies like graphic errors or crashes. At the time of writing, For Honor requires about 36 GB of disk space. The download itself is 32 GB - a so-so result, considering modern games usually require between 10 and 70 GB.

Benchmark

Just like Ubisoft's Rainbow Six Siege and The Division, For Honor comes with an integrated benchmark test, which can be accessed using the graphics menu. The sequence consists of a 70 second camera sweep through and above a battlefield. Because of the numerous effects (fire, smoke, explosions, physics etc.) and rapid camera movement, this benchmark is almost a "worst case scenario". During the first few single player missions, our primary test rig (MSI GT62VR 6RD with Core i7-6820HK & GeForce GTX 1060) averaged a frame rate plus of 10 % compared to the benchmark sequence.

We appreciate the analysis at the end of the test, which shows the minimum, average and maximum fps (and even a breakdown into different zones). Values below 45 appear in orange and those below 30 in red. For multiplayer gaming we recommend at least 40 fps, even though the third-person perspective isn't quite as sensitive to frame rates. For single player mode, a lower frame rate might be acceptable as well.

▶ load Youtube video

Results

To play For Honor at a resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels, a current top-of-the-line GPU is needed. A GeForce GTX 1070 is required to push the preset "High" beyond 40 fps. The notebook standard resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels has much lower demands. The setting "Extreme" runs without stutters with a GeForce GTX 970M or better; the preset "High" requires a GeForce GTX 965M and "Medium" at least a GeForce GTX 960M.

Benchmark tests with less powerful Nvidia, Intel and AMD GPUs are going to follow in the next days/weeks. Entry-level and inexpensive or older midrange GPUs are likely only going to work at a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels and at low to medium settings.

For Honor
3840x2160 Extreme Preset AA:T AF:16x 3840x2160 High Preset AA:T AF:8x 1920x1080 Extreme Preset AA:T AF:16x 1920x1080 High Preset AA:T AF:8x 1920x1080 Medium Preset AA:T AF:4x 1366x768 Medium Preset AA:T AF:4x 1280x720 Low Preset
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (Desktop), 6700K Desktop PC	60.5 (36^min) fps ∼45% 139 (75^min) fps ∼49% 189 (148^min) fps ∼54% 198 (157^min) fps ∼55% 271 (172^min) fps ∼58% 305 (194^min) fps ∼60%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (Desktop), 4790K Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition	54.9 (42^min) fps ∼41% 138 (77^min) fps ∼48%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 (Desktop), 6700K Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070	49.5 (31^min) fps ∼37% 115 (74^min) fps ∼40% 157 (117^min) fps ∼45% 166 (129^min) fps ∼46% 253 (160^min) fps ∼54% 302 (170^min) fps ∼59%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 (Desktop), 4790K Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 Founders Edition	43.9 (36^min) fps ∼33% 111 (50^min) fps ∼39%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Mobile, 6820HK Asus G752VS	43.4 (34^min) fps ∼32% 108 (78^min) fps ∼38% 146 (119^min) fps ∼42% 154 (122^min) fps ∼43% 218 (142^min) fps ∼47% 242 (160^min) fps ∼47%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti, 4790K Asus Strix GTX 980 Ti Desktop PC	33.2 (24^min) fps ∼32% 47.7 (37^min) fps ∼35% 108 (81^min) fps ∼38% 148 (119^min) fps ∼42% 158 (125^min) fps ∼44% 241 (187^min) fps ∼52% 293 (166^min) fps ∼57%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980, 6700K Desktop PC	35.3 (28^min) fps ∼26% 83.1 (61^min) fps ∼29% 115 (93^min) fps ∼33% 121 (98^min) fps ∼34% 198 (140^min) fps ∼42% 279 (188^min) fps ∼55%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (Desktop), 6700K Desktop PC	33.4 (26^min) fps ∼25% 78.7 (47^min) fps ∼28% 108 (88^min) fps ∼31% 116 (91^min) fps ∼32% 190 (142^min) fps ∼41% 275 (194^min) fps ∼54%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Mobile, 6820HK MSI GT62VR	30 (23^min) fps ∼22% 72.4 (41^min) fps ∼25% 99.8 (61^min) fps ∼29% 105 (67^min) fps ∼29% 173 (113^min) fps ∼37% 212 (145^min) fps ∼41%
AMD Radeon RX 480 (Desktop), 4790K AMD Radeon RX 480 8 GB Reference	22.3 (17^min) fps ∼22% 31.6 (25^min) fps ∼23% 77 (58^min) fps ∼27% 107 (86^min) fps ∼31% 112 (91^min) fps ∼31% 268 (197^min) fps ∼52%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970, 4790K MSI Gaming Z GeForce GTX 970 Desktop PC	21.8 (15^min) fps ∼21% 31.8 (25^min) fps ∼24%
AMD Radeon RX 470 (Desktop), 4790K MSI RX 470 Gaming X 4GB	20.6 (16^min) fps ∼20% 29.6 (24^min) fps ∼22% 69.8 (53^min) fps ∼24% 97 (80^min) fps ∼28% 102 (79^min) fps ∼28% 244 (175^min) fps ∼48%
AMD Radeon R9 290X, 4790K Sapphire Radeon R9 290X Tri-X OC	33.6 (28^min) fps ∼25% 76.5 (60^min) fps ∼27%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M, 4700MQ Schenker W504	23.8 (19^min) fps ∼18% 58.8 (37^min) fps ∼21% 80.1 (56^min) fps ∼23% 85.4 (58^min) fps ∼24% 159 (104^min) fps ∼34% 202 (124^min) fps ∼40%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (Desktop), 4790K MSI GeForce GTX 1050 Ti	19.7 (15^min) fps ∼15% 48.9 (35^min) fps ∼17% 68 (54^min) fps ∼19% 71.4 (58^min) fps ∼20% 198 (152^min) fps ∼39%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M, 4700MQ Schenker W504	18.5 (14^min) fps ∼14% 45.8 (34^min) fps ∼16% 63.4 (36^min) fps ∼18% 67 (45^min) fps ∼19% 126 (88^min) fps ∼27% 179 (120^min) fps ∼35%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Mobile, i7-7700HQ MSI GE72 7RE-046	45.8 (33^min) fps ∼16% 62.9 (51^min) fps ∼18% 66.2 (53^min) fps ∼18%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 (Desktop), 4790K Zotac GeForce GTX 1050 2GB	13.5 (10^min) fps ∼10% 42.8 (31^min) fps ∼15% 53.2 (42^min) fps ∼15% 64.5 (52^min) fps ∼18%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Mobile, i7-7700HQ MSI GL62 7RD	39 (27^min) fps ∼14% 53.6 (43^min) fps ∼15% 57.5 (45^min) fps ∼16%
AMD Radeon RX 460 (Desktop), 4790K XFX RX-460P4DFG5 Double Dissipation 4 GB	35 (26^min) fps ∼12% 50.6 (41^min) fps ∼14% 52.8 (42^min) fps ∼15% 142 (111^min) fps ∼28%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965M, 6700HQ MSI GE72 965M Ti	36.8 (26^min) fps ∼13% 49.9 (39^min) fps ∼14% 52.6 (42^min) fps ∼15%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M, 4720HQ Schenker XMG A505	10.8 (9^min) fps ∼8% 27.1 (20^min) fps ∼9% 38.6 (30^min) fps ∼11% 41.1 (33^min) fps ∼11% 78.5 (60^min) fps ∼17% 111 (86^min) fps ∼22%
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M, 6700HQ MSI PE60 2QD	22.7 (16^min) fps ∼8% 33.2 (26^min) fps ∼10% 35.3 (28^min) fps ∼10% 94 (56^min) fps ∼18%
NVIDIA GeForce 940MX, 6700HQ MSI CX72 6QD	10.5 (8^min) fps ∼4% 13.9 (11^min) fps ∼4% 14.4 (12^min) fps ∼4% 44.4 (32^min) fps ∼9%
NVIDIA GeForce 940M, 5700HQ MSI GP62 2QD	13.8 (11^min) fps ∼4% 14.3 (12^min) fps ∼4% 25.8 (21^min) fps ∼6% 43.9 (35^min) fps ∼9%
AMD Radeon R9 M280X, FX-7600P Asus N551ZU-CN007H	21.5 (13^min) fps ∼8% 25.9 (17^min) fps ∼7% 28.6 (18^min) fps ∼8% 45.8 (33^min) fps ∼10% 67 (45^min) fps ∼13%
NVIDIA GeForce 920M, 2970M MSI CX61 2QC 2970M MS-16GD	34.4 (26^min) fps ∼7%

Overview

Test Systems

Desktop PCs	Platform I	Platform II
Mainboard	Asus Z170-A	Asus Z97-Deluxe
Processor	Intel Core i7-6700K (Skylake)	Intel Core i7-4790K (Haswell)
GPU	MSI GeForce GTX 1080 (8 GB GDDR5X) MSI GeForce GTX 1070 (8 GB GDDR5) Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 (6 GB GDDR5) Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 (4 GB GDDR5)	Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 (8 GB GDDR5X) Asus GeForce GTX 980 Ti (6 GB GDDR5) XFX Radeon R9 Fury (4 GB HBM) Sapphire Radeon R9 290X (4 GB GDDR5) Sapphire Radeon R9 280X (3 GB GDDR5) MSI Radeon R7 370 (2 GB GDDR5)
RAM	2x 8 GB DDR4-2133	2x 4 GB DDR3-1600
Storage	Crucial MX100 SSD (256 GB) Crucial M500 SSD (480 GB) OCZ Trion 100 SSD (480 GB) OCZ Trion 150 SSD (960 GB)	Intel SSD 530 (240 GB) OCZ Trion 100 SSD (480 GB)
OS	Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit	Windows 10 Home 64 Bit

Schenker Notebooks	Schenker W504	Schenker XMG A505	Schenker S413
Mainboard	Intel HM87	Intel HM87	Intel HM87
Processor	Intel Core i7-4700MQ (Haswell)	Intel Core i7-4720HQ (Haswell)	Intel Core i7-4750HQ (Haswell)
GPU	Nvidia GeForce GTX 980M (8 GB GDDR5) GTX 970M (6 GB GDDR5) GTX 880M (8 GB GDDR5) GTX 870M (6 GB GDDR5) GTX 860M Kepler (4 GB GDDR5)	Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M (2 GB GDDR5)	Intel Iris Pro Graphics 5200
RAM	2x 4 GB DDR3-1600	2x 4 GB DDR3-1600	2x 8 GB DDR3-1600
Storage	Samsung SSD 840 EVO (250 GB)	Micron M600 SSD (128 GB) HGST Travelstar 7K1000 HDD (1000 GB)	Intel SSD
OS	Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit	Windows 10 Home 64 Bit	Windows 10 Home 64 Bit

MSI Notebooks	MSI GT62VR	MSI GE72	MSI PE60	MSI GP62	MSI CX61	MSI CX61	MSI GE 72 7RE-046	MSI GL62 7RD
Prozessor	Intel Core i7-6820HK (Skylake)	Intel Core i7-6700HQ (Skylake)	Intel Core i7-6700HQ (Skylake)	Intel Core i7-5700HQ (Broadwell)	Intel Celeron 2970M (Haswell)	Intel Core i5-4200M (Haswell)	Intel Core i7-7700HQ (Kaby Lake)	Intel Core i7-7700HQ (Kaby Lake)
Grafikkarte	Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 (6 GB GDDR5)	Nvidia GeForce GTX 965M 2016 (2 GB GDDR5)	Nvidia GeForce GTX 950M (2 GB GDDR5)	Nvidia GeForce 940M (2 GB DDR3)	Nvidia GeForce 920M (2 GB DDR3)	Nvidia GeForce GT 720M (2 GB DDR3)	Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti	Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050
Arbeitsspeicher	4 x 8 GB DDR4-2133	1 x 8 GB DDR4-2133	2 x 4 GB DDR4-2133	1 x 8 GB DDR3-1600	1 x 8 GB DDR3-1600	1 x 8 GB DDR3-1600	2 x 4 GB DDR4	2 x 4 GB DDR4
Massenspeicher	Samsung NVMe MZVPV128 SSD (128 GB)	Toshiba THNSNJ128G8NU SSD (128 GB) WDC WD10JPVX HDD (1.000 GB) OCZ Trion 100 SSD (480 GB)			Toshiba MQ01ABF050 HDD (500 GB)	WDC Scorpio Blue HDD (1.000 GB)	Samsung SSD, Toshiba Trion 150 SSD	Samsung SSD, Toshiba Trion 150 SSD
Betriebssystem	Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit	Windows 10 Home 64 Bit	Windows 10	Windows 10	Windows 10	Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit	Windows 10 64 Bit	Windows 10 64 Bit

Asus Notebooks	Asus G752VS	Asus N551ZU
Mainboard	Intel CM236	AMD K15.1
Processor	Intel Core i7-6820HK (Skylake)	AMD FX-7600P (Kaveri)
GPU	Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 (8 GB GDDR5)	AMD Radeon R9 M280X (4 GB GDDR5)
RAM	4x 16 GB DDR4-2400	2x 4 GB DDR3-1600
Storage	Toshiba NVMe THNSN5512GPU7 SSD (512 GB)	Samsung SSD 830 (256 GB)
OS	Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit	Windows 10 64 Bit

4K Monitor	Nvidia driver	AMD driver	Intel driver
2 x Asus PB287Q	ForceWare 378.66	Crimson 17.2.1	15.40.28.4501

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Editor of the original article: Florian Glaser - Managing Editor Gaming Laptops - 638 articles published on Notebookcheck since 2009

I discovered my interest in computers in my childhood, growing up with MS-DOS and Windows 3.1 in the early 1990s. I was especially fascinated with computer games, even from an early age. From Monkey Island through Lands of Lore to Doom, I tried every game I could get my hands on. I have been working for Notebookcheck since 2009 with my focus mostly being on high-performance gaming laptops.

Translator: Bernie Pechlaner - Senior Tech Writer - 276 articles published on Notebookcheck since 2012

Ended up in the IT sector in the 90s more or less accidentally and have remained in the industry (as a sysadmin) ever since. Always been interested in laptops - first purchase was - if memory serves correctly - a Toshiba Satellite T2115CS with DX4-75 processor, 4 MB of RAM and 350 MB hard disk drive (and Windows 3.1). To this day, laptops appeal to me - much to the chagrin of my wife, who doesn’t seem understand why we need 5-10 of them at any given time ;-).

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> Expert Reviews and News on Laptops, Smartphones and Tech Innovations > Reviews > For Honor Notebook and Desktop Benchmarks

Florian Glaser, Klaus Hinum, 2017-02-23 (Update: 2024-08-15)

Legend
5	Stutters – This game is very likely to stutter and have poor frame rates. Based on all known benchmarks using the specified graphical settings, average frame rates are expected to fall below 25fps
	May Stutter – This graphics card has not been explicitly tested on this game. Based on interpolated information from surrounding graphics cards of similar performance levels, stutters and poor frame rates are expected.
30	Fluent – Based on all known benchmarks using the specified graphical settings, this game should run at or above 25fps
40	Fluent – Based on all known benchmarks using the specified graphical settings, this game should run at or above 35fps
60	Fluent – Based on all known benchmarks using the specified graphical settings, this game should run at or above 58fps
	May Run Fluently – This graphics card has not been explicitly tested on this game. Based on interpolated information from surrounding graphics cards of similar performance levels, fluent frame rates are expected.
?	Uncertain – This graphics card experienced unexpected performance issues during testing for this game. A slower card may be able to achieve better and more consistent frame rates than this particular GPU running the same benchmark scene.
	Uncertain – This graphics card has not been explicitly tested on this game and no reliable interpolation can be made based on the performances of surrounding cards of the same class or family.
The value in the fields displays the average frame rate of all values in the database. Move your cursor over the value to see individual results.